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[Akura]

Wearing a mask could be more dangerous if makes you more inclined to keep adjusting it and touching your face. Add that on top of people who don't cover their nose with the mask, defeating the whole point.

I'm guilty of the first one. The ones I wear at work keep sliding up causing the nose band to keep pressing on the bottom of my eye, which in turn causes eye strain and fatigue. Also, I keep inhaling my beard.

As for the second, one of my coworkers keeps the mask below his nose, and he's been reminded more than once to fix it. But then, he's also a douche who has consistently surprised me with the fact that he's still employed.
Then again, we are desperate for new hires at the moment, so that's a plausible excuse for now.

[Rolan7]

But wear it properly and don't touch your face.

If you want to be extra safe, wear eye protection (e.g., sunglasses.) It may be possible to get COVID through contact with your eyes.

Yeah, this.  Since Covid can enter through the mouth and nose, I'm pretty certain it can enter through the eyes.  If I really want to feel safe I put on sunglasses with my mask, regardless of how sketch it makes me look.

Generally I feel fine with just the mask and gloves.  They do little to protect me directly, but they do help with my brain.  They keep me from casually touching my face.  They remind me to social distance, and others to do so.  They particularly get me washing my hands, because they're gross and sweaty (I have to rinse them out every time I go shopping - discouraging me from doing so more than necessary). 

And if I *am* exhaling virus asymptomatically, they help protect others from that.  My hands would be covered from my breath and the objects in my home, but then I put those gloves on and don the mask.  (I also like the mask for body-dysphoria reasons, being honest).

I don't think touching your face while removing a mask is a big deal though?  As long as you keep away from the orifices (eyes/nose/mouth)... eh, maybe a problem.  I tend to pull it off without touching my face anyway though, because its presence reminds me that we literally live in Deus Ex 1. 

(replaying that game has been a trip - weird enough that it came out right before 9/11 and vaguely predicted that, but the main plot is about a deadly pandemic and the government's monstrous response).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Deux Ex honestly predicted the entire collapse of the neoliberal world, and right when it was at its peak of power, too.

[ChairmanPoo]

I was actually starting to wear xomputer glasses all the time after this started.  I went to the optic to get some custom ones which was a happy coincidence because it turns out I have mild astigmatism. So I got some graduated filtered lenses, which I wear most of the time. Eye cover, blue light protection and mild astigmstism fix all in  one.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of contagions are person to person through suspended particles though. There's actually a pretty strong debate going on about this at the moment

[martinuzz]

I tried wearing a niqab and gasmask for extra safety but for some reason it made everyone who saw me scream, run away and throw themselves in front of cars while blindly running away in panic.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You should show them you mean no harm and support Western Civilization by carrying a flame of liberty, the larger the better, which can also be used to sterilize any air between you and others.

[Max™]

Everything short of properly fitted N95 masks are indeed better at protecting others from you, surgical masks for example aren't designed to seal your face, they're designed to keep you from breathing directly into the thing you're working on, like an open thoracic cavity, but they're useless for protecting others when you go to the grocery store because you're just leaving trails of potentially infectious air shot out past your cheeks.

On the other hand, I saw a thing yesterday which I am LITERALLY ANGRY WITH RAGE over having never seen before: https://twitter.com/FixTheMask/status/1249354757308735489/video/1

Simply doing that turns a surgical mask from a directional protection to a goddamn N95 level equivalent both ways!

[martinuzz]

It looks pretty darn smart, but it only works if your nose has the right shape. If I do that, the rubber band will keep rolling off my nose and whipping my lips.

[Doomblade187]

It looks pretty darn smart, but it only works if your nose has the right shape. If I do that, the rubber band will keep rolling off my nose and whipping my lips.

You can get around that by using armature wire for the nose.

[martinuzz]

Heh, that's not a bad idea.

[ChairmanPoo]

Everything short of properly fitted N95 masks are indeed better at protecting others from you, surgical masks for example aren't designed to seal your face, they're designed to keep you from breathing directly into the thing you're working on, like an open thoracic cavity, but they're useless for protecting others when you go to the grocery store because you're just leaving trails of potentially infectious air shot out past your cheeks.

I respectfully disagree.

On the other hand, I saw a thing yesterday which I am LITERALLY ANGRY WITH RAGE over having never seen before: https://twitter.com/FixTheMask/status/1249354757308735489/video/1

Simply doing that turns a surgical mask from a directional protection to a goddamn N95 level equivalent both ways![/quote]
That's interesting though. It'd help to deal with face shape. Every bit helps

[Max™]

They also have a pattern you can cut out of a rubber sheet that achieves the desired effect better, seriously folks, for every N95 mask that gets made there are something like 300 surgical masks. You gotta form and cut out an N95 to make it work right but you merely cut surgical masks out of the fabric so they're super easy to make tons of comparitively, and slapping this contraption on top (which is reusable) of a properly rated level 1 2 or 3 surgical mask is ridiculously more effective than you would expect.

Using this for people who can't fit an N95 mask properly is SUPER important too.

[martinuzz]

Not just for people who can't fit a N95 mask... Over here wearing a N95 mask is still forbidden to the general public because they are needed in the hospitals and elderly care.

[Max™]

Yeah, they're definitely a thing that should be prioritized for those who NEED them in their line of work/exposure risks, but even in those cases there are people who simply won't have the right face shape for an N95 to seal properly. The fix the mask people did testing and for their seal tests they had a woman who was just too small to get a good seal with an N95 but they were able to seal a surgical mask well enough to pass the mask fit tests hospitals use.

[Starver]

You can get around that by using armature wire for the nose.

My mask (heat washable, reusable) has just such a wire. Darnit but it does not do as well as promised, and I have to adjust the thing, consciously avoiding the bits below where the breath passes through. (I'd argue that it's hardly N95 level, even/especially with the rubber-band trick, but that's another issue.)

On my own 'mask regimine', I've just erased three or four long paragraphs, which were getting out of hand, and will (better, if insufficiently) summarise as follows. I don't wear my mask continuously outside the house. If I were to use public transport, I would put it on, and other unavoidably close and internal circumstances. Open air, with no-one nearby (at worst, a transient passing by as I step into the road to avoid an oncoming fellow- pedestrian, hand signaling my intentions and ensuring I'm traffic-free for the duration), the mask would be less useful and even counter-productive. Both in idly fiddling with it and in ultimately in becoming an inattentive bastard lost in his own little antisocial bubble of smug self-protection.

The time it is not on my face (or at home, awaiting variously its carriage in my travels or a good boil-wash) jt is in a sandwich bag in my pocket. It is extracted and restored in a practiced manner that keeps nominally-infected surfaces from touching those that aren't so designatable. The former goes from the "breath through" part of the cloth through to the bag interior, the latter includes the ear-loops, the bit with the nose-wire in, the outside of the bag and the lining of my pockets and all other pitential contents.

My hands are not gloved. With gloves, I could easily treat their surfaces as unduly safe when they may not be. Instead, I rely on being concious of what I touch. (Not who. I'm already a dab-hand and not dabbing my hands onto people in the first place. My last handshake was September/October last year - I could find the exact date easily enough - when profered by an almost perfect stranger in a situatiin it would have been impolite to refuse.)

I also distrust public hand-sanitiser dispensors (you have to somehow manhandle one form of pump or other prior to the dosage-delivery itself, perhaps it was last used by someone conscientious who had good reason to be conscientious, and maybe I get to unknowingly be that person at some point). So I just take more notice of what I must touch, and how (like favouring a hand).

Oh look, as many paragraphs, but far fewer words in each. That'll have to do.